Jemima Cardona, left, and dad Juan Cardona work with a language interventionist at Vanderbilt's Kennedy Center.

Written by

Caleb Whitmer
| The Tennessean

That's the problem Ann Kaiser, professor at Vanderbilt, is working on. Her team, part of a larger multisite study, is trying to determine the more effective of two therapies for autistic children who don't respond well to early intervention.

Children in the study, ages 5 to 8, are "nonverbal," or have limited spoken communication abilities. Many autistic children have trouble communicating. ...